obittersweet: Life Lessons from Obituaries

By Tamara Macpherson Vukusic

A fascinating collection of essays inspired by real obituaries and filled with quirky anecdotes, interesting perspectives, and thoughtful observations. Obittersweet delivers 120 life lessons, each dotted with a question to encourage meaningful reflection and organized into one theme for each month of the calendar year. Whether you have an insatiable curiosity about people, an appreciation of the craft of writing, or may be a connoisseur of the art of living, Obittersweet is a book to be cherished. This read is both timely and timeless. Readers will be back to purchase copies to gift to loved ones.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Mosaic Press
• Release date: Mar 16, 2021
• ISBN: 9781771615303

Book preview

Vukusic

Introduction

I have an odd ritual. I spend Saturday mornings with a coffee in one hand and the obituaries in the other. I have turned my obsession into an art, scanning for ink that lures with promises of quirks and vulnerabilities. Stuff that gets to the grit of a person, rather than the window-dressing of their professional titles. Mitch had Tuesdays with Morrie. I have Saturdays with the dead. These weekend coffee dates have provided me with guidance, validation, encouragement and sometimes a belly laugh. I started this weekly tradition in my 20s and two decades later I’m still at it.

Every week delivers new life lessons, often from people whose life is nothing like my own. I always feel grateful that I still have time to use what I learn from them in my own life. What a gift to discover a lesson nestled in a life story, illuminating what was valued and admired most about a person, all the salient bits distilled to a smaller word count than an elementary school essay. In the pages of this book I share some of these gifts with you.

This collection of 120 micro-biographies are those of ordinary people. People like you and me. Great parent, loving spouse and good friend are common attributes noted in the obituaries. But there are so many ways to live a life. It stands to reason that what one leaves behind can take different forms.

An obituary usually introduces us to a person through the eyes of their loved ones. I wrestle with whether or not this conveys the whole truth of a person. It couldn’t possibly, could it? After someone dies, they live on through the perceptions and memories of others. What others choose to remember becomes who they were. I often wish the person being remembered had the opportunity to read their own obituary. Can we be brave enough to write the obituary of a loved one while they are still living and share it with them like a love letter?

Reading the obits is like wandering the halls of a gallery, admiring a collection of interesting portraits. A few are elaborate, done in oil, with thick, gilded frames. Others are modest sketches. Some are bright caricatures full of quirky details. When I turn to my own canvas, I can try to emulate a shade of aquamarine from one or the curve of a line that caught my eye in another. My painting may be less measured, more conformist, less sophisticated, more outlandish. In the end, or at the end, it will reflect my own style, with glimpses of what I learned from the masters.

This collection of obit excerpts and life lessons is organized into monthly themes because life and death are inextricably connected to time. It has been said that who we meet is all about timing. Thanks to obituaries, the right people and the right words can find us even after they are gone.

On Saturday mornings I welcome these people — now numbering in the thousands — into my home. I applaud the beauty they found in the routine, the value they placed on experiences that didn’t come with framed certificates, and their ability to laugh at themselves. They have helped me navigate, plot, placate and activate. I’m pretty sure I’m a better person thanks to them.

Why would a 20-year-old read obituaries?

I started reading the obits in my early 20s. I was working as the communications officer for The Perley and Rideau Veterans’ Health Centre in Ottawa. The best part of my job was my time with the residents and patients. Every lunch hour for two years, Word War II Veteran and resident Lionel Lalonde wheeled his way into my office to deliver a french lesson. James Shepherd and I read to each other from our secret poetry notebooks at the end of my workdays. Peggy Taylor fed my reverence for military women with her Second World War stories of parachuting out of an airplane with her evening sandals tied around her neck so that she could pretty up and go the pub to extract information from soldiers. I felt the loss of each of these residents profoundly. I regularly turned to the obits to seek details of their funeral service. I would find myself lost in the life stories of these people, feeling gratified when their spirit was captured, scribbling additional details in the margins. I was almost always surprised to learn something that left me yearning to go back in time to ask more questions.

So began my obituary reading ritual that has continued for more than two decades.

How to read this book

When I read an obituary, I turn the words over in my mind, often discovering a life lesson in the process. This book is based on 120 obituaries chosen from the thousands I have read over twentyplus years. It is organized into twelve chapters reflecting the twelve months of the calendar year. The life lessons gleaned from these obituaries are woven around the monthly themes and presented in three parts:

Part 1 is an excerpt from an obituary published in a Canadian newspaper.

Part 2 weaves a combination of facts from the obituary with research to contemplate the narrative more deeply. I often take an imagined sojourn beyond the confines of those facts and draw parallels to my own life experiences.

Additional excerpts pulled from the obituary appear in italicized quotation marks.

Part 3 is a question that invites you to reflect on your own life.

Within the pages of this book I hope you will recognize glimpses of your own life, qualities you’d like to cultivate, and strengths and quirks about yourself (and those you love) that are worthy of celebration. But above all, I hope you enjoy the read.

Why obituaries matter

Not everyone is remembered with an obituary. Many Indigenous Peoples favour oral tradition and ceremony over a written tribute. The same is true of other people around the globe.

Publishing an obituary often requires money and a person to do the writing. People without means or who are estranged from family often go unheralded, but not for lack of a story to tell. Having spent time searching for details about my own grandfather who grew up in an orphanage in England, I can attest that some family trees have whole limbs missing.

I’ve been exploring the reasons for which people write an obituary. They include honouring a person’s life, informing a community, closure for loved ones and inviting others to attend a memorial service or extend sympathies. But there is one reason that caught me by surprise: obituaries serve as a public record for the sake of genealogy.

One of my all-time favourite obits makes no mention of a birth date or names of the spouse and children. It is a series of snippets that tell the story of a mother who worked hard and loved even harder. The only information that pins the obituary to a particular person is a name.

I often ask myself; which matters more? Passing on a family name? Contributing the gene for eye colour? The 50/50 odds of passing on artistic ability? Or is it the unique traits and perspectives that develop over a lifetime? What is the essence of a person, unique as their fingerprint?

We can’t choose what we inherit, but these bits of humanity are something we can admire, covet, hold close and even try to emulate (or strengthen our resolve to do the exact opposite). Does it matter whether we share their surname? If we were inspired and moved only by humans with whom we share a thread of DNA, would we continue to uphold and celebrate Terry Fox, Martin Luther King, Jr. or Malala Yousafzai in classrooms across our country?

The perceived value of artwork often escalates after an artist dies. So too do our memories of a loved one once they are gone. As humans we treasure things that are hard to acquire, and this includes moments with another person.

We don’t have to be related to, or even know, the people staring back at us in portraits to recognize their beauty, or courage or foibles. Likewise, anyone can glean something valuable from the way another person lived their life — what the person was willing to fight for, what they valued, or what gave them joy.

Perhaps we can add life lessons for the living as a reason for why people write — and read — obituaries.

New Year’s Revolution:

Celebrate what you already do

JANUARY

To heck with New Year’s Resolutions. Only eight percent of Canadians keep them anyway. What do you already do that is worthy of celebration?

In 2020 the most common New Year’s resolutions were to eat healthier, exercise more and save money. I can’t recall an obituary that remembers a person for achieving any of these things. The eight percent that kept their resolutions probably felt pretty good and maybe even dropped a pant size, but is that what really matters?

Time spent doing what you love to do with the people you love to do it with becomes the tangible, lasting part of what you leave behind. It becomes your legacy, and perhaps the blueprint that alters the way something is done long after you are gone.

It isn’t the number of bench press repetitions or dollars banked for which each of the following ten people are admired and remembered. Let them shed light on what you could celebrate now, and what will be celebrated about you long after you are gone.

This year, rather than crafting a New Year’s resolution, consider reflecting on what you already do that is worth celebrating. Resolve to live your life in a way that when you are gone, people notice something unique and precious missing.

Honour individuality

Aida Maria Ambery (1957–2015)

Her children were a great joy in her life. She always celebrated their unique natures — and their choices.

This same appreciation for the individuality of others was reflected in her wide range of eclectic close friends.

This trait must have made Aida an excellent mental health outreach worker. She knew all her clients by name, and most of them knew hers. She showed others that she valued the unique characteristics that set them apart by remembering them. She made sure they felt seen.

I am constantly reminded that kids aren’t mini versions of their parents. The fact that I enjoy a crowd, chaos and spontaneity has no bearing on whether or not our kids do. One of the hardest parts about parenting for me has been acknowledging my own assumptions and biases, and then trying to let them go.

Nowhere is this more evident than in the video footage taken in the 24 hours after our first son was born. My husband slicks our newborn’s erratic flock of red hair into a rooster comb and hollers cock-a-doodle-doo loudly enough to prompt passer-by to poke their head in the door of our hospital room. I express my amusement loudly while holding the camera. We are both oblivious to the attempts of our son to turtle into his receiving blanket. Sixteen years later, he is still showing me the value of gauging the mood of a room before bursting in like the Kool-Aid Man.

Aida made space for others with an "incredible gentleness, kindness and acceptance of others." But that didn’t mean she was a wallflower. She was also known to blast an 80s tune and dance around the kitchen to kick off a dinner party. Aida has shown me that I can celebrate the individuality of others while staying true to what makes me unique.

What preset ideas do you have about the right way to live life that you can set aside when celebrating the people in your life?

Provide gathering places

The Rev. Walter (Paddy) Sellers (1919–2019)

When he wasn’t involved in re-building a church that had burned, or building a church to hold a growing congregation or updating a gracious older church or adding plumbing or new pews…

Paddy served as a minister with the United Church and led congregations in Manitoba, Ontario and Labrador. This hard-working man kept cattle and bees and built his own house, garage and barn. Paddy valued places because places hold people together. Many obituaries are dotted with references to gathering places: a church, a cultural centre, a family cottage or simply a welcoming home.

In a sea of new homes that have replaced front porches with car garages, we need more communal spaces. Spaces where exhausted parents with toddlers can commiserate, seniors living alone can find company and craft, teens can cut loose in safety and all of us can step out of our silos and be reminded that we are social creatures who need each other in countless ways.

In our house, teens are starting to frequent our family room and fridge. Sometimes they pull up a stool in the kitchen to talk about what’s on their mind. My husband and I couldn’t be more happy about this.

What can you do to make your home a place where people gather? What communal space